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photo courtesy Orlando Fringe

The Coldharts wind up the Orlando run of their "Poe Triptych"

It's been a frosty few years since touring artists Katie Hartman and Nick Ryan — better known to Orlando Fringe patrons as The Coldharts — last fired up local audiences with their provocative play Eddie Poe at January 2020's Winter Mini-Fest. One life-changing pandemic later, the pair have finally returned with Edgar Perry — the third and final panel of their "Poe Triptych" that began with the award-winning Edgar Allen — which is running in repertory with its companions at Fringe ArtSpace now through Nov. 19. Ahead of opening night, Hartman and Ryan caught me up on how COVID changed their lives and the important role Orlando Fringe has played in their creative career.

Although The Coldharts had been Brooklyn-based since their inception in 2012, the pandemic prompted them to move out of New York City and up to the Hudson River Valley, which Hartman says "has been a beneficial change for us, in that we realized that living in the city and maintaining lives as independent artists that tour a lot, that we were running on the road and then when we came back we had to keep on running; and that was unsustainable."

The pair turned their inability to tour into a positive opportunity to establish better work/life balance and diversify their interests, with Hartman producing the Cincinnati Fringe Festival and Ryan working as a chef at a theater residency in the Catskills. Now that The Coldharts have returned to the road, Ryan says they "have definitely come back a bit slower and more strategic," in order to make more room for their offstage lives. But they've made room in their reduced schedule to let Orlando fans be the first ever to experience their entire "three-hour adaptation of a 14-page short story" (as Ryan jokingly puts it) by the ur-Goth poet Edgar Allan Poe.

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photo courtesy Orlando Fringe

The Coldharts wind up the Orlando run of their "Poe Triptych"

Since each installment of the Poe Triptych was created to stand alone, you don't have to have seen the earlier entries — or indeed know anything about Poe — to attend Edgar Perry, which focuses on the author's time as an engineering student at West Point. However, those who view the full cycle may appreciate that after centering on Hartman in the first piece and Ryan in the second, for the finale, Ryan says, they "wanted [in] this one the driving force to be both our voices." And although Poe could be dismissed as a dour antique, Hartman says the shows are still "fun [and] mischievous," observing, "We're 200 years removed from the times in which Poe lived and there's a lot that's the same."

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photo courtesy Orlando Fringe

The Coldharts wind up the Orlando run of their "Poe Triptych"

"We're in a period of time where the theater is in crisis, and it is dwindling," says Ryan, "and part of the responsibility of a theater artist in these times is to just keep the fire lit."

Both he and Hartman give Orlando Fringe credit for being one of the important organizations that is tending those flames in the face of Floridian politics, especially for queer and counterculture artists. Hartman says, "Orlando Fringe is known for the high quality of talent and production value, most notably among local artists. As an out-of-town artist, you know you have to bring your best, and the Orlando Fringe audience is an incredibly generous and supportive community that appreciates risk-taking."

"We've felt very supported by Orlando even before we came here," adds Ryan, crediting Fringe's former artistic director Michael Marinaccio for originally recruiting them from the Canadian circuit. "Immediately we felt very, very embraced, [and] the fact that Orlando is leading the charge in the U.S. Fringe circuit to start making year-round programming, getting this circuit humming all year round, that's the direction we want the Fringe movement to go in."

"We can't have classic work unless we have new work, and the fact that Orlando is creating a space for that, to develop new work and to keep emerging and mid-level artists like ourselves being produced, is really big," says Hartman. "I see [Fringe] as a neo-vaudeville; we need a mid-level circuit for independent theater artists in North America."

In addition to hosting acclaimed out-of-town artists like The Coldharts, the nearly year-old ArtSpace is also making room for homegrown talent. Last month, the Orlando Artist Guild got to present a fully staged, full-length version of The Spider Queen, playwright Bryan Jager's hysterically insightful autopsy of the disastrous Spider-Man musical. It's been a delight watching this show evolve from a fascinating but overstuffed script in 2020 to a trimmed-down hit at the 2022 Fringe, and now get enough breathing room to dig into the dysfunctional relationship between auteur Julie Taymor and author Glen Berger at the story's emotional core. (Look for the Guild's unauthorized Muppet Christmas Carol tribute at ArtSpace on Dec. 22.)

Fringe could continue to be a launching pad for groups like The Coldharts and Orlando Artist Guild, but the organization is currently at a crossroads, with the announced departure of executive director Alauna Friskics in January 2024. Nobody in charge has asked my opinion — and, full disclosure, my wife works for the organization.

But I only hope Friskics' successor has roots in Orlando Fringe's culture and community (instead of a "nationwide search" recruit who flees Florida after 18 months), and that they hit the ground running with a clearly articulated vision of Fringe's future, before this precious flame flickers out.

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image via Little Radical Theatrics

Little Radical Theatrics' production of 'The Rocky Horror Show' opens Friday, Nov. 10, and runs through Nov. 19 at the Lowndes Shakespeare Center.

It's been 50 years since Richard O'Brien's gender-bending B-movie parody The Rocky Horror Show debuted in a tiny London theater, and 30 since I joined the worldwide cult surrounding its cinematic spinoff.

And even though it's been half a decade since the Rich Weirdoes — the live Rocky Horror Picture Show shadowcast I produced — lost their longtime home at Universal CityWalk, the troupe continues to perform sold-out seasonal shows across Central Florida.

But does this once-shocking artifact of 1970s glam-rock, which utterly bewildered my teenage niece during her recent inaugural viewing, still speak to a younger generation unfazed by sexual fluidity?

That's one of the key questions I posed to director Travis Eaton and producer Fatima Viegas of Little Radical Theatrics (littleradicaltheatricsinc.com), whose production of The Rocky Horror Show takes over the Lowndes Shakespeare Center's intimate Mandell Theater Nov. 10 through the 19th. The last time I talked to the pair, they were preparing for last summer's production of The Addams Family, which they've followed with successful runs of Jesus Christ Superstar, Hunchback of Notre Dame and Matilda.

"We've been doing everything a little radical and not exactly the way you'd expect it to be done. And we've only seen our pool of talent and audiences continue to grow," says Eaton, adding, "The last year and a half has been a period of some really great growth, both artistically as far as what we're trying to bring to the community, and the community response in showing up and becoming our patrons."

Little Radical has particularly noticed growth among the 35-to-55-year-old demographic, which Eaton calls "the heart of our audience right now." Eaton attributes that growth to the messaging of their selected shows, which "always is about acceptance; taking people as they are for who they are, and accepting them, [which resonates with] late Gen X/early millennial and down."

That mission of promoting acceptance and tolerance made Rocky Horror a perfect fit for Little Radical's repertoire. Eaton recalls discovering the movie at high-school theater parties, and Viegas calls the show "something that I wanted to do for a long time." Eaton credits both the film and play for helping "mainstream audiences of the '70s begin to accept [different sexual expressions and lifestyles] because they were wrapped in this weird alien sci-fi." He plans to honor the film's fandom with an emcee-hosted preshow and audience participation prop bags, while using scripted cue cards to (hopefully) control the callback chaos.

"We want you to have fun, we want you to have the experience, but let's not overpower the fact that it's a live human and you're not just yelling over a TV screen that can't hear you," Eaton explains.

Some of the retorts and rituals I learned at Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings a quarter-century ago would get you canceled today, and some of the key lyrics of its iconic anthem (particularly "transvestite" and "transsexual") are anathema to today's LGBTQIA+ community.

But "we have to perform the script as it is written, verbatim, word for word. The words will never change; how we use those words is the important factor," says Eaton.

In Little Radical's vision of the show, "Some of the language that's outdated, we can use it as a reclamation of that word, or redefining of that word. ... It's about celebrating the communities represented there, and not using the words as outsiders."

In many other ways, Little Radical Theatrics is taking a fresh approach to the show, updating its aesthetics with references to 1980s slasher films and upending the text's traditional gender balance through nontraditional casting, starting with nonbinary performer Marlo Coffin in the titular role.

"The idea of casting Rocky in a body-positive way is something we often don't get," says Eaton. "The idea of the chiseled muscle man is another concept that I wanted to push back against. Then there was also the idea that they are completely gender non-conforming, and the idea that they've been created that way on purpose was prescient to me [as] a commentary [saying] we all exist in all of these forms, and Rocky can be just as much of a man as Brad."

Jennifer Rae Paxton, who stars as Frank N. Furter, also helps Little Radical's production flip the standard script in more ways than one.

Onstage, Eaton says Paxton's interpretation of the homicidal antihero "presents differently about what the concepts of the gender binary are, as far as now I'm looking at a woman assigned at birth and their understanding of traditional masculinity." And behind the scenes, Paxton has served as the production's intimacy coordinator, a role Eaton advocates for.

"If we take the discussions around intimacy coordination and intimacy blocking out of the director's realm, all of a sudden actors feel more free to be a part of the discussion and to collaborate in that space, [and] we gather true consent far easier when there's someone who's an intermediary for that discussion," Eaton says. "I don't think we could have done this show without having that."

Perhaps the most daunting adversary Little Radical faces isn't rival scientists or disloyal henchmen, but the venue crunch faced by all of Orlando's nomadic theater companies.

"I am trying to find my own home at some point, but it's difficult," says Viegas. "I'm having difficulty finding a venue, but the prices [and] fees that they charge are just really beyond my budget. ... It's hard to find a venue that I would like to call my own."

I'm hoping they find an affordable place where they can not only dream it, but be it.